Today Show's Idea of Balance; Leahy: "Civil Liberties Defender"; Bush Has No Right to Bomb; "Pretty Opinionated" as a Reporter
1) Though, as Tom Brokaw noted, "the Attorney General
has public opinion on his side," Dan Rather referred to how "Ashcroft
told a Senate panel that the government needs every policy, including the
controversial and questionable ones." All three broadcast network
evening shows made note of how Democrats accused Ashcroft of hypocrisy for
not checking detainees against gun records.
2) Balance as practiced by NBC's Katie Couric: Tell
Senators from both parties the dangers of Ashcroft's policies. "In
fact, Senator Shelby, civil libertarians are calling military tribunals
the perversion of the American justice system." She prompted Senator
Leahy: "The wiretapping of conversations between suspects and their
attorneys. What's your biggest beef about that?"
3) Washington Post headline over profile of liberal
Democrat Patrick Leahy: "Civil Liberties Defender Picks His
Fights." Post reporter Edward Walsh did not identify Leahy as a
liberal until the 16th paragraph, well after he noted he's "a
frequent target of conservatives" and has "drawn the wrath of
conservatives."
4) At Wednesday's White House press briefing Helen
Thomas demanded to know what makes President Bush "think that he has
the right to go into a sovereign country and bomb the people?"
5) "I've always been pretty opinionated, even as a
reporter," New York Times columnist Tom Friedman admitted to the
Washington Post's Howard Kurtz. Friedman's wife confirmed his
perception. After he won a Pulitzer for his reporting, she wondered:
"What for, editorial writing?"
6) Media Reality Check. "Bully the Whistle-Blower,
Ignore the Bias: In Book, Bernard Goldberg Recounts How He Was Shunned
& Vilified For Exposing Truth About CBS."
7) He did all he could to help the Soviet Union obtain the
atomic bomb, but when asked why, when the FBI was pursuing him, he
didn't flee to the Soviet Union he told CBS News: "I didn't want to
leave the United States to go to some hellhole like Russia or China."
1
Reporting
on Attorney General John Ashcroft's appearance before the Senate
Judiciary Committee, ABC, CBS and NBC on Thursday night put a special
emphasis on how Democrats hit him on not checking gun purchase records
against those being detained. "The Democrats complain that Ashcroft
is bending over backwards to protect one right, and that is the right to
own a gun," noted ABC's Linda Douglass.
Despite overwhelming public support for the
Bush administration's policies to investigate terrorism, CBS's Dan
Rather referred to how "Ashcroft told a Senate panel that the
government needs every policy, including the controversial and
questionable ones, it is using to meet that threat." NBC's Tom
Brokaw, however, did point out how "the Attorney General has public
opinion on his side."
MRC analyst Brad Wilmouth took down how the
three broadcast networks set up their December 6 stories on Ashcroft's
testimony, as well as how each relayed the Democratic polemical charge on
gun records.
-- Peter Jennings on ABC's World News
Tonight: "In Washington today the Attorney General made a very high
profile visit to the Senate to defend the Bush administration's new
rules for the Justice Department in the wake of September the 11th and, as
he surely knew in advance, there were Senators there who approve of the
changes and some who believe that Mr. Ashcroft is too enthusiastic about
military tribunals, looser rules for wiretapping, and detaining people
without some public notification. ABC's Linda Douglass, who's on the
Hill tonight, was there to hear it all. Linda?"
Linda Douglass stressed: "The Democrats
complain that Ashcroft is bending over backwards to protect one right, and
that is the right to own a gun. He is a staunch defender of gun owners'
rights, and he's telling the FBI they cannot use records of gun
purchases to find out if any of the people being detained bought a
gun."
-- Dan Rather, back in New York City from his
few days in Kabul, on the CBS Evening News: "There is news tonight
about the threat to the homeland from foreign terrorists. U.S. Attorney
General John Ashcroft told a Senate panel that the government needs every
policy, including the controversial and questionable ones, it is using to
meet that threat. But some Senators remained concerned about what the
government is and is not doing. CBS's Bob Schieffer has late
details."
Schieffer observed: "The only tense
moments came when Ashcroft was asked why he had blocked the FBI from using
data gathered during gun sale background checks to trace terrorist
weapons. Ashcroft, a strong advocate of gun owners' rights, said as he
reads it, the law doesn't allow it. And as for changing the law, he was
uncommittal."
Ted Kennedy: "The FBI obviously wants that
power in order to try and deal with the problems of terrorism. Will you
support it?"
John Ashcroft: "I'll be happy to consider
any legislation that you would propose."
-- Tom Brokaw on the NBC Nightly News:
"In this country, a simmering debate over terrorism trials and civil
rights boiled over some today when Attorney General John Ashcroft appeared
before the Senate Judiciary Committee to defend military tribunals and
other decisions. The Attorney General has public opinion on his side and,
as NBC's Lisa Myers reports tonight, he was on the offensive
today."
Myers noted: "Though Ashcroft vows to use
every tool available to fight terrorism, Democrats complain he's been a
hypocrite on one issue. An opponent of gun control, Ashcroft has blocked
the FBI from using federal firearms records to see if any suspects have
bought guns."
2
Given
the opportunity to simultaneously interview both Democratic Senator
Patrick Leahy and Republican Senator Richard Shelby just hours before
Attorney General John Ashcroft appeared before the Senate Judiciary
Committee, NBC's Katie Couric could have challenged each with the
arguments of the other. Instead, Couric approached both from the
assumption that Ashcroft's policies are misguided.
Couric demanded that Shelby react to liberal
complaints while she prompted Leahy to outline why the Ashcroft policies
are so bad. "In fact Senator Shelby civil libertarians are calling
military tribunals the perversion of the American justice system,"
she asserted. But she cued up Leahy: "The wiretapping of
conversations between suspects and their attorneys. What's your biggest
beef about that Senator Leahy?"
MRC analyst Geoffrey Dickens caught the
questions Couric posed on the December 6 Today:
-- "Senator Leahy let me start with you
if I could. What kind of reception will John Ashcroft get today?"
-- "And you are particularly peeved that
you were not consulted. That Congress passed this broad anti-terrorism
measure and then after that the Bush administration unilaterally took
these steps."
-- "In fact, Senator Shelby, civil
libertarians are calling military tribunals the perversion of the American
justice system. They have a lot of complaints about a defendant's
inability, perhaps to appeal a conviction about the secret nature of this.
About no ban on, or the ban rather, on hearsay and the exclusionary rule
which will not keep out evidence that has been incorrectly gathered. There
are all sorts of issues attendant to these tribunals. Do you have any
problems with that?"
-- "You know in 1993, Senator Shelby,
federal prosecutors convicted Ramzi Yusef in the first World Trade Center
trial. Why not go through the federal court system if it worked
before?"
-- "Senator [Shelby], one other problem
that, that Senator Leahy just referred to. As many foreign countries that
have so far rounded up the majority 350 or so Al Qaeda members have a
serious problem with the concept of military tribunals. Spain, in fact,
has said it may not even extradite these individuals if they are tried
this way in the United States. As a result of that response do you think
the Bush administration will have to back off on this at all?"
-- Couric raised a pro-Ashcroft point, but
didn't ask Leahy to respond to it as she wanted to know why he disliked
another policy: "And in fact Senator Leahy, I just want to interrupt
because we are almost out of time, but public opinion is, frankly, behind
Senator Shelby and his colleagues and the Bush administration. Having said
that, the wiretapping of conversations between suspects and their
attorneys. What's your biggest beef about that Senator Leahy?"
Over on CBS's Early Show, MRC analyst Brian
Boyd noticed, while Jane Clayson asked Republican Senator Hatch,
"isn't it fair to say we might be jeopardizing the civil rights that
make our country great?" she also pressed Leahy: "Civil
libertarians may be upset, Senator Leahy, but do you think the average
American is losing sleep about the civil liberties of suspected
terrorists?"
Much of the media certainly are.
3
"Civil
Liberties Defender Picks His Fights," announced the headline over a
Washington Post profile of Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, otherwise known
as a liberal Democrat. Post reporter Edward Walsh did not identify Leahy
as a liberal until the 16th paragraph of his 23 paragraph tribute, after
he relayed quotes about how Leahy is not very partisan.
Walsh, however, applied the conservative label
four times to Leahy detractors, noting how he's "a frequent target
of conservatives" and has "drawn the wrath of
conservatives."
I don't recall a Washington Post profile of
Congressman Dan Burton, on the eve of a hearing, which was headlined
anything like "Champion of Government Integrity Picks His
Fights."
An excerpt from the December 6 Washington Post
"Federal Report" page story brought to my attention by the
MRC's Liz Swasey:
The veneer of bipartisanship that has enveloped Capitol Hill since the
Sept. 11 attacks is unlikely to hold up today in a hearing room of the
Dirksen Senate Office Building. The chief antagonists will be familiar to
each other.
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft has been summoned to the hearing to
explain some of the administration's latest plans to combat terrorism....
The man who will lead the questioning, and who demanded that Ashcroft
make the appearance, is Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J.
Leahy (D-Vt.)....
Leahy presided at Ashcroft's confirmation hearing and voted against his
nomination, saying Ashcroft "lacks the sensitivities and balance we
need in an attorney general."
Such stands have made Leahy a frequent target of conservatives.
In emerging as the Senate's most outspoken critic of some of the
administration's domestic anti-terrorism measures, Leahy has again drawn
the wrath of conservatives, who have flooded his office with e-mails and
telephone calls questioning his actions.
Under the headline "Osama's Enabler in Congress," the
conservative magazine Human Events this week declared, "It is Leahy
who would put Americans at greater risk of terrorism."
But Leahy, who last summer was described by the conservative National
Review as "the meanest, most partisan, most ruthless Democrat in the
Senate," has been through this sort of thing before....
John D. Podesta, who worked on Leahy's staff in the 1980s and was
President Bill Clinton's chief of staff, doesn't think Leahy is "cut
out of a particularly partisan mode."...
He "had a very good relationship with [Clinton] but could often be
a critic of the administration," Podesta said. "When he felt
strongly about something like the land mine issue, he was up in the face
of the president and [national security adviser] Sandy Berger and me....He
will pick his issues and fight you whether you're a Republican or a
Democrat if he thinks he's right, and a lot of the time, he's proven to be
right."...
He has compiled a solidly liberal voting record. His causes have
included championing a ban on land mines and making it easier for death
row inmates who are appealing their convictions to obtain DNA testing....
END of Excerpt
For the story in full, go to:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63750-2001Dec5.html
4
At
Wednesday's White House press briefing former UPI reporter Helen Thomas
demanded to know what makes President Bush "think that he has the
right to go into a sovereign country and bomb the people?"
As the senior White House correspondent
Thomas, now a columnist with Hearst Newspapers, gets the first question
when she attends briefings, which isn't very often anymore. On December
5 she took advantage of her privileged position to pose this question to
Press Secretary Ari Fleischer: "Ari, what makes the President -- I'm
taking note of his wide-swinging threats in speeches recently. What makes
him think that he has the right to go into a sovereign country and bomb
the people?"
Fleischer was baffled by her hostile tone:
"His threats?"
Thomas: "Any country. Yes, he's-"
Fleischer: "Would you like to be more
specific?"
Thomas: "Does he think he can go beyond
Afghanistan or anywhere else?"
Fleischer responded: "The President has made
it clear to the American people that the United States, in the wake of an
attack on our country, will defend itself. And as a result of defending
ourselves, you can see what is happening in Afghanistan. The President has
said that this is a war against terrorism because terrorists continue to
pose a threat to the United States and to others around the world, and
that he is involved in phase one of defending this country against
terrorists, and he will continue to do so. Major."
Thomas, raising her voice to cut off CNN's
Major Garrett: "What gives him the authority to go into other
countries and bomb them, which is what he is threatening to do?"
Fleischer tried again: "The right as the
Commander-in-Chief to protect and defend the American people."
The real wonder is why the White House still
provides press credentials to such a political activist.
5
"I've
always been pretty opinionated, even as a reporter," New York Times
columnist Tom Friedman admitted to the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz in
a December 6 profile. His wife confirmed his admission. Kurtz recounted:
"In 1988 he shouted upstairs to his wife after getting word that he
had won a Pulitzer. 'What for, editorial writing?' she shot
back." That was seven years before his left his reporting position to
become the newspaper's foreign affairs columnist.
Kurtz observed how Friedman was transformed by
September 11: "Friedman is usually liberal and was sharply critical
of George W. Bush during the campaign, accusing him of 'affable
ignorance' and 'deeply, deeply shallow' views on foreign affairs.
But he's been a big booster of the President since the September attacks,
urging people to 'give war a chance' during the weeks when little
progress was being made in Afghanistan."
As the December 3 CyberAlert detailed, on the
November 30 Late Show, Friedman mocked the European press for focusing on
civilians being hurt by bombing when, in fact, "the Afghan civilians
were praying for another ration of B-52s." He also pointedly noted
how "people say to me often, 'war doesn't solve anything.' To
which I say, 'guess what, neither does social work.'" For full
quotes: http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2001/cyb20011203.asp#2
The old Friedman was scared of President
Reagan as Commander-in-Chief. Check out this exchange on the March 5, 1995
Face the Nation between Friedman and then-GOP presidential candidate Lamar
Alexander:
Friedman: "Governor, I'm kind of a foreign
policy wonk, and it scares the bejesus out of me to have someone as
President of the United States, Commander-in-Chief, and finger on the
nuclear button who is such an outsider to Washington and American foreign
policy."
Lamar Alexander: "Well, did Ronald Reagan
scare you, Tom?"
Friedman: "He sure did."
Alexander: "Did he? He didn't scare me. I
thought he was the best national defense and Commander-in-Chief and
foreign policy President we've had since Eisenhower."
Friedman, referring to the 1993 barracks bombing:
"Ask 245 Marines in Beirut about that."
It would seem he has disproven his theory
since President Bush had no foreign policy experience and yet is now
earning praise from Friedman for how he's directing the war on
terrorism.
To read the Washington Post profile, go to:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64378-2001Dec5.html
6
The text
of a Media Reality Check, produced by the MRC's Rich Noyes and
distributed by fax on Thursday afternoon, titled, "Bully the
Whistle-Blower, Ignore the Bias: In Book, Bernard Goldberg Recounts How He
Was Shunned & Vilified For Exposing Truth About CBS."
The text in the pull-out box in the middle of
the faxed page:
Goldberg: Not Anti-Liberal, Just Anti-Bias
"None of this should be seen as an argument against liberal values,
or as an endorsement of conservative values. This is a big country with a
lot of people, and there's room for all sorts of views. This is nothing
more than an argument for fairness and balance, something liberals ought
to care about as much as conservatives." -- From Bias: A CBS Insider
Exposes How the Media Distort the News.
The text of the December 6 Media Reality
Check:
In 1993, when he was well-regarded by the top people at CBS,
correspondent Bernard Goldberg recommended exploring both sides of the
liberal bias debate for the prime time magazine Eye to Eye. According to
Goldberg, "the report I envisioned would be fair and balanced, just
the way the news was supposed to be at CBS....We do stories about
everything else, about every other institution in America; why not a story
about ourselves?"
Talk about trying to float a lead balloon: "A few days later, [the
show's Executive Producer Andrew] Heyward came back with the answer....I
could do the story, he said, 'but you can't ask Dan any tough
questions.'" The Dan in question was, of course, CBS anchor Dan
Rather. Goldberg refused to accept "these ridiculous
restrictions," which would have been intolerable to CBS had the
interview subject been anyone else -- anyone outside CBS News, that is.
This 1993 encounter should have alerted Goldberg to the furious CBS
reaction that greeted an op-ed he wrote three years later for the Wall
Street Journal, which accurately fingered a CBS Evening News story by Eric
Engberg as emblematic of the liberal bias permeating the elite media.
"Mr. Engberg's report set new standards for bias," Goldberg
stated in his op-ed. He then proved his assertion with a point-by-point
review of Engberg's sarcastic and one-sided "Reality Check."
As he recounted in his new book, Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the
Media Distort the News, Goldberg's bosses weren't interested in
reprimanding Engberg for his biased story or in fixing the system so that
CBS's news would be more balanced. Instead, Goldberg found his job in
jeopardy and his motives being questioned by CBS colleagues who refused to
speak with him.
"People are just stunned. It's just such a wacky charge, and a
weird way to go about it," CBS's Bob Schieffer told the Washington
Post at the time. "I don't know what Bernie was driving at. It just
sounds bizarre." Goldberg explained that he made his complaints
public only after no one in authority would acknowledge that CBS's
liberal bias was a problem. Reading Schieffer's dismissive quote in the
Post, Goldberg realized CBS was still in denial: "Wacky? Weird?
Bizarre? What I found wacky, weird, and bizarre was that the chief
Washington CBS News correspondent found absolutely nothing wrong with
Engberg's piece."
Goldberg was immediately removed from Dan Rather's Evening News, and
Rather hasn't spoken a word to his former friend since 1996. Denied an
assignment on 60 Minutes II in 1998, Goldberg agreed to leave CBS on the
day he became eligible for his pension.
"I would have been thrilled if New York Times columnist Anthony
Lewis, who is so sensitive to all sorts of 'chilling effects,' had
shown just a little sensitivity to the plight of a reporter whose job was
hanging by a thread because he wasn't diplomatic, because he actually
had the nerve to publicly express an unpopular view about -- oh my God! --
the press," Goldberg wrote. "Liberals in the media -- who would
have come down with the vapors if a conservative CEO had so much as given
a reporter a dirty look -- didn't flinch when CBS News executives took
me off the air and suggested I might be fired because they saw me as a
whistle-blower."
"If I had worked at Firestone and blown the whistle on defective
tires, 60 Minutes would have immortalized me," Goldberg rued.
"Unfortunately, the defective product I was making noise about
wasn't tires, it was network news."
Over the past 14 years, the Media Research Center compiled a mountain
of evidence proving the liberal bias that has degraded the networks'
reputations, and Goldberg offered his own examples. But what his book
uniquely adds is damning insight into the utter contempt network chiefs
have for those who dare to complain about their flawed product.
END Reprint of Media Reality Check
To read a transcript of Engberg's 1996 story
which led to Goldberg's ostracization, as well as for a RealPlayer clip
of it: http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2001/cyb20011205.asp#7
7
He did
all he could to help the totalitarian Soviet Union obtain the atomic bomb,
but when asked why, when the FBI was pursuing him, he didn't flee to the
Soviet Union, he told CBS News: "I didn't want to leave the United
States to go to some hellhole like Russia or China."
The man who spoke those words: David
Greenglass, the brother of Ethel Rosenberg. He freely admits that while an
Army soldier assigned to Los Alamos in the 1940s he drew sketches of what
he saw scientists working on and passed them to the Soviets. In a December
5 story on CBS's 60 Minutes II, reporter Bob Simon recounted how
Greenglass has now recanted his testimony that his sister typed up U.S.
secrets for her husband to deliver to the Soviets, thus supposedly
absolving her of the charge which led to her death sentence.
Here's the sickening part of the interview:
Bob Simon: "After the war...Greenglass's
career in espionage was over and he thought he'd gotten away with it. But
four years later [Julius] Rosenberg warned Greenglass that the FBI was
onto them and urged him to flee the country. So Greenglass had a family
passport picture taken, but he had no intention of using it."
David Greenglass: "What, I didn't want to
leave the United States to go to some hellhole like Russia or China, or
wherever the hell he wanted to send me, or Czechoslovakia or
whatever."
Isn't there a "hellhole" to which
we can send this guy...like Afghanistan? -- Brent Baker
Sign up for
CyberAlerts:
Keep track of the latest instances of media bias and alerts to stories the major media are ignoring. Sign up to receive
CyberAlerts via e-mail.
questions and comments about
CyberAlert
subscription
You can also learn what has been posted each day on the MRC's Web site by subscribing to the "MRC Web Site News" distributed every weekday afternoon. To subscribe, go to:
http://www.mrc.org/newsletters
|
Home | News Division
| Bozell Columns | CyberAlerts
Media Reality Check | Notable Quotables | Contact
the MRC | Subscribe
|